You Know You Want To

[I still enjoy hula-hooping, but not drunk up on the bar.]

For a very, very, very long time, I didn’t recognize my impulsivity as a trait, let alone a behavior pattern to be addressed. It simply felt like a part of me, not even consciously recognized, seemingly as unchangeable as my brown eyes. And so, whenever The Urges would show up with one of their bright ideas, I just followed along, never understanding that not following along was an option. Totally unaware that one is allowed to change one’s mind. 

And so I let The Urges blow in and whip me along life’s road like a VW bus in a West Texas windstorm, perpetually mistaking Short-Sighted Stupidity for Intuitive Flashes of Genius. Which, yes, is how I wound up hastily marrying and then hastily divorcing. Twice. And also why there are photos of me from the ‘80s, drunk and hula hooping on a bar, bedecked in Chuck Taylors and a thrift store ball gown, my crew cut like a spiky crown. And, too, my impulsivity explains how I came to share my ranch with an entire family of evil mini donkeys, five pregnant cows, and an enormous pig that literally smiles when you scratch him where his nuts used to be. (Good boy, Pickles.)

Of course the list goes on. But let’s cut to the part where, about a year and a half ago, I finally started scrutinizing my impulsivity, most especially regarding money. I set myself to changing deeply embedded financial habits and to my astonishment, I have mostly stuck to the plan and made very satisfying progress. 

I’m not sure I can take personal credit for letting go of my other impulsive ways. It is true I haven’t jumped off any cliffs—real or metaphorical—in ages. But I chalk up this decline more to a combination of getting older and residual lockdown lethargy than any conscious effort on my part. The Urges have mostly left the building of their own accord. I have no more desire for Romance, Fame or Fortune, that wicked trio comprising The Urges Major Arcana. As go they, so go lesser calls to act first and deal with consequences later in therapy.

I’m at my angle of repose now. That’s not a complaint, but rather acknowledgement and a good measure of acceptance. Mostly I like it here, like the way that my life is pretty calm—animal and air conditioner crises notwithstanding. The most impulsive thing I’d done in recent memory (if you don’t count the Eclipse Trip) was to indulge in a late night toasted PB&J when I wasn’t actually hungry, but readily gave into my heart’s desire for my childhood’s answer to Proust’s madeleines. 

Well, that had been the most impulsive thing of late. Then came this past weekend. A little backstory:  A couple of weeks ago I got a really nice email from Katy, a young director who had written a very short script that she was readying to shoot. She understood I was probably too busy but would I consider playing the lead? This would involve two days of filming in far east Texas, aka The Big Thicket, which, if you’ve never been, imagine the geographical love child of the forest in Deliverance and New Jersey’s Pine Barrens, a place Tony Soprano favored. For disappearing bodies.

I said yes for a number of reasons. I was honored to be invited to collaborate on an art project with young people. I love young people and the creativity that is particular to youth. I also wanted to use the trip to test the waters of being gone from the ranch for a few days. And, I admit it, I wanted to be a little impulsive beyond eating unnecessary late night sandwiches. Not like opening the door to a future return to my old ways. More like a Farewell Tour.

Though it’s been forever since I traveled, I wasn’t even out of the gate when I remembered one of the great joys of vacation—an opportunity to observe my anxiety in a fresh setting, to see just what crazy lengths my mind will go to exploring every possible disaster potentially awaiting us. Would my AirBnB cabin sufficiently contain the dogs or would Louise figure out how to escape, as she did on the Eclipse Trip? If they were sufficiently contained would they eat the furniture? Would I return from the set to discover Spite Poop strategically left just next to a pee pad? What if my truck broke down? What if the ranch burned down? 

The movie set—in a state park—offered further ample fodder. I was to do some solo kayaking in a few scenes. Way back in the day—nearly forty years now—I canoed often enough to understand the basics of paddling. So I wasn’t particularly afraid of getting in the boat, but I also wasn’t sure I could keep from tipping over. Then, for another shot, I was to paddle a two-person kayak while Richard, the most patient Director of Photography ever, put his life and the survival of his $20,000 camera in my none too expert hands, seated behind me as, yes, I steered us straight into a bridge support. Oh how my sphincter contracted at all this responsibility as visions of all the ways I could single-handedly ruin everything moshed in my head.

In the background the Fear of Snakes tape was also rolling. Out loud, the crew joked about alligators. Then, after lunch, just as I was about to get back in my kayak and paddle over to another bridge, Richard’s voice crackled over the director’s walkie talkie. 

“Alligator.”

We looked across the river to Richard up on the bridge, then to where he was pointing. And there it was, an alligator heading exactly to the spot where I was supposed to paddle. 

We made some changes to the script after that. Not to be a diva or anything but no fucking way was I getting back in the water. Even though I knew this to be true as soon as I thought it, my anxiety invited me to have an imaginary argument with the director in which she tried to convince me that I had to get back on the river. 

Reality looks like this though—there is no arguing. Katy immediately understands we need a new plan and makes one. This is how it goes over two long days of shooting in the heat, swarmed by Jumanji mosquitoes. An obstacle arises and I watch the entire team shift gears and improvise a solution. I am amazed by this easy getting along by everyone. It’s like I’ve been invited on some kinder, gentler Outward Bound adventure. Even the snacks are excellent.

No one gets snake bit or alligator wrassled. The dogs do not escape or fuck up the cabin. In the end, the two biggest tragedies come in the form of a blister on the back of my left foot and the sad realization that I am apparently someone who needs to practice a lot more to understand the intricacies of properly shitting in a composting toilet. 

As I drove down country roads through thickening forests, the cab of my sky blue Tacoma became a sort of snow globe, and my mind like a series of Russian nesting dolls in the form of travel memories begetting other travel memories and on and on, all of these recollections swirling around me like glittery snow. Yes, I was 60 year-old me on the road to the Big Thicket. But I was also me, 35 years old, with my 8 year-old in the back of our no a/c car, driving us through July’s cruel heat to the east coast to “see the cousins.” And I was also me, 24 years old, Summer of ‘88, on my very first big road trip ever, as Pauli and I spent a summer driving from Florida to Victoria Island, BC and back—six thousand miles all told.

How little I knew of geography and history and culture when I embarked on that adventure. How much I learned along the way. I now know, definitively, that that was the most epic road trip of my life, there will never ever be another as grand. This doesn’t make me sad, knowing The Best Trip Ever is behind me. It makes me happy that I unwittingly stumbled into such an amazing journey at the start of trying to figure out who I was. And how very much that trip shaped who I would become—because along the way, among other things, I visited Austin for the first time. I also met my son’s father. 

I need to remind myself of this when my wicked anxiety is trying to laundry list me into a panic attack by vividly conjuring so many foolish choices I let The Urges talk me into, the very real danger I too often put myself in. Remind myself that good things, too, have come from this hurling myself at life. If not for impulsivity and some barber shears, I would not be Spike. If not for impulsivity, I would not have moved to Austin. If not for impulsivity, I would not have this ranch and all the sharing opportunities it allows me. If not for impulsivity, I would not have my Henry, the greatest joy of my life.

I also need to remind myself that my mind is an awful lot like a colicky baby sometimes, crying out for reasons I can’t always pinpoint, but lulled, like that same howling baby would be, by the soothing rhythms of just being driven around, on the road, sitting still and moving all at once, moving and moving until the panic yields to gently falling snow.

NOTES:

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